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REV. CHARLES WADSWORTH'S THANKSGIVING SERMON. 



THANKSGIVING. 



A SERMON 



PREACHED IN THE 



ARCH STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA. 



ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1861. 



) CHARLES WADSWORTH 









( 






PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



I) • PHILADELPHIA: 

T. B. PETEESON k BROTHERS, 306 CHESTNUT STREET. 



^JB*^ 



Price 15 cents a copy; $1.50 a dozen; or $10.00 a hundred. 



THANKSGIVING. 



A SERMON 



PEEAl HED I.V Till 



ARCH STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



On Thursday, November 28, 1861. 



CHARLES WAPSWORTH. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST, 






PHILADELPHIA: 

T. B. PETEKSON & BROTIIEKS, 

No. 30G CHESTNUT STREET. 



ET45-8 

•I 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S61, by 

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



2 / i 



"IN EVERY THING GIVE THANKS." 

1 THESSALONIANS, v. 18. 

The simple and obvious meaning of the text is, 
that we have always something to be thankful for ; 
that gratitude is due to God in every earthly con- 
dition in which a living man can be placed. And 
this is a truth appropriate to this occasion, for we 
are observing our great national festival in circum- 
stances wherein some men judge that the keeping 
a fast in sackcloth were a more seemly service. It 
cannot be denied that we are to-day a deeply dis- 
tressed people, and that our attempted offerings of 
thanksgiving will ascend largely from desolate house- 
holds and sorrowing hearts. 

To this occasion, therefore, the usual style of 
service would be manifestly inapt. We have little 
of the old exulting spirit; and amid this evident 
and almost overwhelming despondency, need exhor- 
tation even unto the solemn duty of thanksgiving. 

Such an exhortation is the text; and in view of 
it the question, which perhaps we have all asked, 
AVhy should we keep festival when fasting better 
becomes us? appears ungodly, infidel, blasphemous; 
for we have here a Divine command, " To give 
thanks in every thing," (?'. e.) in every actual or 
possible earthly condition. And this command is 
most manifestly both reasonable and righteous; 
for where is there a living man to-day that has 



not abundant reason for gratitude to God? It is 
never so bad with us as we deserve. It is never 
so bad with us that it might not be worse. If a 
man have lost property, he still has friends ; if 
friends have deserted him or died, he has yet health ; 
if health too be wanting, still he lives ; if an arm has 
been broken or palsied, he remains strong in his 
feet ; or if he be halt and lame, he has the use of 
his eyes ; or if sightless, he hears ; or if . deaf, he 
yet speaks ; or if at once blind and deaf and dumb, 
he yet feels and thinks; and for this single power 
of thought, allying him unto God and his angels — 
this function of a spirit winged and waiting for 
immortality — he should, were it heaven's only gift, 
give thanks unto God reverently with a joy un- 
speakable and full of glory. 

But we may go further than this, affirming that, 
even in our worst estate, we are receiving at God's 
hand vastly more of good than of evil. In our 
experience there are always more days of sunshine 
than of storm, and more senses ministering to de- 
light than to anguish ; so that, reckon as we will, 
God has ever large claims on our thanksgiving. 
Meanwhile it will appear that very much of our 
misfortune is the result of perverted dispensations, in 
their design merciful. Our poverty is a result of 
abused, or at least neglected, opportunities of accu- 
mulation ; and our sickness is caused by a wilful 
violation of beneficent physiological laws. Even 
these sore national troubles, whereof we especially 



complain, have sprung, at least proximately, from 
our own evil passions. 

We may ascribe the evils we experience to God's 
special providence, but with manifest injustice. Our 
Heavenly Father never constrained as to that indo- 
lence or imprudence resulting in bankruptcy, nor 
to the physical intemperance ending in disease. 

Nor is it the great and gracious God, that for half 
a century has excited at the North and the South 
those extreme and intolerant fanaticisms which have 
brought this sore distress upon us. On the contrary, 
it is the very prodigality of His goodness unto us 
above all peoples of the earth, which, 'working per- 
versely upon a corrupt nature — like Heaven's sun- 
shine on tropical jungles, developing noxious and 
deadly growths — has strengthened thus malignantly 
these principles of evil. 

Verily, if our land be doomed to destruction, and 
this fair fabric which we fondly deemed Liberty's 
great temple, be now abandoned of God to the de- 
stroyer, nevertheless, will its mighty ruins remain 
through all time monumental of God's marvelous 
love unto a self-destroyed people, and upon every 
stone of shattered pillar, and arch, and aisle amid our 
death-dust will be found inscriptions testimonial of 
the tender mercies of our God ! If the American 
Nation be to-day dying on these hills like a strong 
giant in the very flush of its youth, it is not because 
God's thunderbolt hath smitten it— it dies as a 
suicide ! 



6 

But then this nation is not dying ! We"are afflicted 
indeed, we are sorely in straits, and the kings of the 
earth shake the head, and shoot out the lip, and 
laugh us to scorn, and against us hath the feller lifted 
the axe as upon a cedar of Lebanon, boasting against 
this mighty tree that grew and was strong, and whose 
leaves were fair, and whose fruit much, under whose 
shadow we had pitched our tents, hopeful that our 
children's children, yea, and the children of the 
stranger unto the end of time, would find joyous 
shelter — against this goodly tree — this grand growth 
of God's centuries, proudly boasting — " Behold we will 
hew it down, and cut off its branches, and shake off 
its leaves, and scatter its fruit; therefore, let the 
beasts get away from under it, and the birds from its 
branches." 

Nevertheless, blessed be God, " there is hope of a 
tree if it he cut down that it will sprout again" We 
are hopeful of our old cedar yet, that " through the 
scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like 
a plant" We have before God an abiding confidence, 
that our nationality will survive this assault and 
emerge from the conflict only more radiant and 
powerful — a confidence, not of doting credulity, but 
of philosophic reckoning, resting on the goodness of 
our cause ; the greatness of our strength ; the whole 
history of our past as demonstrative in our behalf 
of Divine purposes of mercy; and all thoughtful 
prophecy of the future which forsees for us a great 
mission of civilization and Christianity to a redeemed 



yet oppressed world. We have indeed as small fear 
that we are to be permanently dissevered and 
destroyed, as that this well-rounded world will resolve 
to the old nebula, or the Copernican system go 
back again to chaos and night. 

On the contrary, we regard the trials we are now 
enduring as only parts of a great transitional de- 
velopment — a very evolution of that Divine wisdom 
which, overruling man's iniquitous purpose, delights 
to bring good out of evil. And in this connexion 
there are considerations very obvious and simple, 
which should both reconcile us to these trials, and 
make us grateful in the midst of them. Observe 
then : 

First — That our nationality is and must be a 
growth, or development, and therefore, like all growing 
things, depends for its progress on constant and 
sharp antagonisms. This is God's ordinance from 
the beginning. It was the primitive geological law 
whereby from fiery cataclysms emerged systems 
fairer than before in their materialism, and with races 
more numerous and perfect in their form and organi- 
zation. And this remains manifestly the law of all 
life. From its lowest type, through manifold grada- 
tions, to the highest, it is developed amid, and 
strengthened by, antagonisms. Even vegetable life 
is a long and ceaseless conflict. An acorn falls into 
the ground, and at once the elements of the soil set 
to work to destroy it. Nevertheless, these destructive 
agents are seen presently only to have weakened the 



8 



husk, and quickened the germ of a higher organism 
— a green blade pierces the hardened earth, and lifts 
itself heavenward, while vigorous roots shoot abroad 
in the soil, drawing up and assimilating and so 
growing strong upon those very elements that seemed 
armed for its destruction. Meanwhile this natural 
antagonism goes unceasingly on — gravitation pulling 
heavily at its growing trunk and branches ; and 
tempests wrestling to cast it down to destruction. 
And yet the living tree constantly roots itself and 
rises, not merely in spite, but positively by means of 
the conflict: its trunk grows in stateliness amid the 
rough ministry of the storm, and its branches clothe 
themselves with green garlands — the very spoil it 
has won from a hundred baffled tempests. And the 
secret of the oak's great growth is this law of antag- 
onisms. 

So, too, of all higher types of life. The sea-polyp 
floats repose fully yielding to every tide, and the 
butterfly wages no war with sunbeam and zephyr ; 
but the lion's awful strength is matured in savage 
wilds, and the eagle's mighty wing is nerved by the 
hurricane. No man becomes great in any direction 
of his powers through a gentle ministry — the Colum- 
bus of the seas is tempest-tossed into seamanship — 
the Caesar of Empires is fought into courage. 

Nor is this less the law of great, social, and 
national existences. It is on this very principle of 
antagonisms that God works out His grandest pro- 
blems of moral government. 



Human progress is ever like that of a ship beating 
to windward, in the very eye of the tempest. Civi- 
lization, like the oak, is the result of an assimilation 
of seemingly destructive elements, and its sheltering 
branches, as the tree's, are bright with the spoil of a 
thousand hurricanes. Even Christianity, from its 
rude cradle, down through all its mighty triumphs in 
long antiquity, has fulfilled the same law, and grown 
strong through antagonisms. So that the consumma- 
tion of God's most stupendous purpose, was achieved, 
not by the ministry of singing angels, but through 
human antagonisms, with treachery and a cross. 

Now, studied where you will, this will seem the 
great law of all national life, and most manifestly of 
our own. American nationality is rather a growth 
than a production. Not a social edifice, planned by 
human genius, and realized by man's art and device, 
but a social organism, growing from a germ, and 
silently, under God's law of development. The 
horoic men who planted these colonies, and whose 
social virtues and sublime Christian faith have 
shaped and colored our destiny, seem not even to 
have foreseen, much less projected, this great Repub- 
lican Commonwealth. But, as the oak in an acorn, 
unperceived by man, came, in the rough old Puritan- 
ism, the national germ, and its development has been 
through this law of antagonisms. 

At first, the colonists were not only a feeble, but 
a widely scattered, and unsympathizing folk — un- 
congenial communities, dwelling each in its own 






10 

sphere, as aliens and strangers, and brought, only by 
outward pressure, within the power of social attrac- 
tion. First, the cruelties of a common savage foe 
kindled friendly sympathies among the scattered 
hamlets, and then, as they grew into considerable 
colonies, the intolerance in turn of English, French, 
and Dutch rule, linked stranger-hearts into a com- 
munity of suffering, and stranger-hands into a com- 
munity of resistance. Then came the Revolutionary 
period — when the attack of insane tyranny upon 
sacred charters, and the storm of foreign invasion 
around those homes in the wilderness, brought a 
scattered race more tenderly into sympathy, over- 
coming old prejudices of envy, or ignorance, or 
fear, and through that stormy era of confederacy, 
ever strengthening those social ties, till they took 
the seeming of nerve and sinew and vital tissue 
in a single, common, organic life. 

With the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 
the colonies became, at least in theory, a composite 
nation. Old leagues and compacts and articles of 
confederacy, were put away as partition walls — pro- 
vincial watchwords were forgotten, provincial flags 
furled forever, and in the form and with the 
functions of a single organism, the young Republic 
set forth in her progress, all her sons keeping step 
to the same music, following the same banner, 
E Pluribus Unam, their one glorious motto amid, 
or against, the kingdoms of the world ! 

And yet, though from the first our theory of a 



11 

nation was perfect, there was lacking in the reality 
something of the compactness of a vital organism, 
whose great strength should be wielded by one 
imperial will, and wherein a common heart should 
beat, and a common mind think. There was, as 
philosophical statemanship had foreseen, the working 
within, of powerful unassimilated elements threaten- 
ing destruction. Sectional interests, State jealousies, 
personal ambitions, all tending to occasional inter- 
ruptions — indeed, seemingly to the ultimate destruc- 
tion of the one common life. There was need of 
another and a last antagonism, to compact the 
organism — the burst of another fiery flood over the 
conglomerate strata, melting and moulding them 
forever into one composite world. 

Now, just this thing we are experiencing. And 
though to short-sighted and timid reason it seem 
a veritable destruction, yet to masterful faith it 
is no more than a fulfilment of the law of all 
social progress, by which a state of conflict, of 
discomfiture, of seeming overthrow and disintegra- 
tion, precedes a condition of higher excellence and 
triumph. 

The grand obstacle to our permanent nationality 
has been, from the first, this heresy of State Sover- 
eignties — the selfishness of the old Colonial and 
Confederate eras, transmitted as hereditary virus 
to disorder the functions of constitutional life. But 
the effect of this war must be to annihilate that 
pestilent heresy at once and forever. This, indeed, 



12 

is its grand end and aim. One resistless, controlling, 
central power — one great, sympathizing, supreme 
heart, sending the tides of a common healthful 
life through all the members to the farthest ex- 
tremities — this is what we want, what we are 
struggling for, what we are sure to obtain. For 
whatsoever else we may lose in this fiery trial, 
if we come forth with national life at all, it will 
be with a strong, common, constitutional life — in 
fact, as in theory, not discordant congeries of 
States, but a composite nation. If true to our- 
selves, we may, and God helping us, we will, drive 
out forever this disquieting demon, and bequeath 
to the future more than we inherited from the 
past — a government, not only the freest and fairest, 
but as well the most immutable and mighty of 
the governments of the world. 

But obviously this could be done only by sore 
conflicts. There are evil spirits that yield not to 
gentle exorcisms — " a kind that goeth not forth 
even by prayer and fasting," — fiends that " cast 
into the fire and into the water to destroy," and 
must needs "tear and rend sore," even unto a 
seeming of death, ere they depart forever. 

With such an one are we wrestling, and the 
struggle is good in itself, and will be glorious in 
its influences. With all its terrible evils it seems, 
as well to the eye of philosophy as to the heart 
of faith, of the phenomena of development — a 
great step in our political progress — an affliction, 



13 



indeed, in form, but in fact a great blessing, which 
it becomes us, not merely with patience, to endure, 
but to receive as from God with true Christian 
thankfulness. 

Observe again — 

Secondly. How this thankfulness becomes us in 
view of some benefits incidental to this great national 
struggle. Evil as War is self-considered, yet in the 
experience of a sinful race it is oftimes a necessary, 
always a mitigated evil. And though Peace is always 
self-considered a blessing, yet in its influences upon 
human character, it proves, not unfrequently, more 
disastrous than even War itself — like a long calm on 
a campagna breeding pestilential malaria, until we 
thank God for the purifying and strengthening 
ministries of the storm. 

There are principles of our nature, developed by 
long continued industrial and commercial prosperity 
altogether more fearful and foul than those which 
inspire and arm men for patriotic battle. One of 
these, and the most fearful, because the root or 
ground-form of all evil, is covetousness — the con- 
summation of all iniquities — toward God the idola- 
try that denies Him the throne — toward men the 
selfishness that inflicts every injury. 

Now, in our enjoyment of unexampled and almost 
uninterrupted peace, this evil principle has been 
terribly developed. We were fast becoming the most 
mercenary people on the earth. So intensely mate- 
rial had become our civilization, that we were 



14 



tempted to say, that the old chivalric and sentimental 
barbarism were better. In the absence of a feudal 
aristocracy of birth and blood, we were inaugurating 
that worst of all social castes — an aristocracy of riches. 
Craft, shrewdness, subtlety, artifice, cunning — any- 
thing, everything mighty in money-getting, were 
grounds of claim for our patents jof nobility. The 
men successful in heaping treasures, let them be 
whatsoever else they might — dexterous cheats, un- 
scrupulous defaulters, adroit stock-gamblers, robbers 
of public revenues — though uncultured in intellect, 
unchristian in morals, uncouth in manners — were 
nevertheless fast becoming the principalities and 
powers of our social hierarchy. 

Esquire Money-Love, Colonel Many-Acres, the 
Reverend Dr. Make-Gain, the Honorable Mr. Great- 
Purse — these were the men taking precedence of the 
great nobles of character at the court-end of the 
Republic. Gold was becoming our supreme national 
god. Gold controlled our franchises, elected our 
rulers, shaped our politics, and colored our religion. 
For gold our juries rendered verdicts, our rulers 
reversed sentences, our statesmen endorsed measures, 
our physicians turned charlatans, and the very 
ministers of our sanctuaries left God's sheep in 
the wilderness, to wander vagrant and mounte- 
bank through the land, lecturing on — moonshine. 
Virtue was a thing quoted in prices-current ; con- 
science and character rose and fell with the stock- 
market. " The creed of the multitude was, life is 



15 

the time to get rich ; death is the winding up of a 
speculation ; Heaven is a mart with golden streets ; 
hell a debtor's prison for unsuccessful men ; the chief 
aim of man is to glorify gold and enjoy it forever." 
The very temples of God were places of money- 
changing, and the priest at the altar an alchemist 
with a crucible in its holy fire, seeking the philoso- 
pher's stone. The public, in a word, were mad for 
gold, and when gain becomes the grand popular end 
and aim — the summiim bonum — the highest and 
ultimate good — then has avarice become the spread- 
ing leprosy of the social state, and all things fair and 
noble and of good report sicken and die, as in the 
breath of the pestilence. 

I speak not these things invidiously. I but say 
what we all know. We were, proverbially to the 
world, and consciously to ourselves, fast sinking into 
the unleavened sordidness of avarice. Like the 
Hebrews at Mount Sinai, we had torn off our orna- 
ments of honor and honesty — the jewels of price 
which our fathers brought through the flood — and 
cast them into the raging fires of covetousness and 
then came forth a golden image, and with songs and 
dances we worshiped the calf! 

Meanwhile this insane greed of gain was naturally 
and necessarily working out our ruin — for by an 
immutable law of life, wealth begets luxury, and 
luxury palsies the strength and digs the graves of 
nations. There was indeed an hour, only just past, 
when it seemed that this dire palsy of avarice had 



16 

already reached the national heart, and we were 
hopelessly death-struck. That season no American 
heart can ever forget, and its record shames us more 
than flight from a hundred battles ! Alas what days 
those were ! When with the old flag spurned, torn, 
trampled under traitorous feet, our nationality 
reviled, our capital threatened — the derision of 
enemies — the gazing-stock of a world — we stood yet 
calmly by, ease-loving, pusilanimous, servile, seem- 
ingly troubled only about prices-current and stock- 
markets, careful only of trade and gain. There lay 
the grand old ship of State, with all her priceless 
freight of human interests and hopes and fears, and 
divine purposes of mercy to an oppressed world, yet 
driven back from her course, dismantled, dismasted, 
on her beam-ends, rolling a shattered wreck upon 
the waters, seemingly about to be broken up piece- 
meal and go down forever ; and yet we, not girding 
ourselves in seamanship to wrestle with the storm, 
neither tightening a rope, nor standing to the 
rudder, we only anxious about her lading — the 
supercargo's invoices — with outstretched hands and 
quivering lips crying, " Out with the life-boat, the long 
hoat, the yawl, the pinnace, for Heaven's sake save — the 
dry goods ! To the rescue ! Bear a hand every man 
— Oh! the Cotton — the Cotton !" 

Verily it did seem that the palsy of avarice had 
reached the national heart ! Columbia the fairest 
child in the family of nations seemed dying ! The 
old Empires watched for the death and made ready 



17 

mourning weed and cypress-wreath for the burial! 
Her disconsolate sisters beyond the sea were 
quite prepared to administer, not exactly to her 
relief but — upon her estate ! — But blessed be the 
Lord God the young giantess did not die ! Presently 
there gleamed from that glazed eye a flash of the old 
fire ! There was a re-knitting of wasted sinews ! 
a quickening and deepening of the old vital flood ! 
the stricken one staggered to her feet again ; she 
breathed heaven's pure air and drank the living 
water, and grew strong, and walked abroad ! and 
her old flag floats again ! her old eagle soars ! She 
concluded to defer dying, at least for the present ! 
our disconsolate English cousins can not have their 
"wake" yet! Sir Lytton Bulwer writes glorious 
romances, but rather fails as a prophet! And God's 
hidden meaning of love in these American provi- 
dences lies a little too deep even for the stupendous 
plummet of Earl Russell's intellect ! 

Blessed be God we are saved ! But how 1 By 
blood-letting! — the good old allopathic, and only 
infallible remedy for this plethora of avarice ! We 
are saved from this deadly evil of Peace, by the 
sharp, but smaller evil of War ! The thunder of 
cannon in Charleston harbor broke the lethargy 
that was fist destroying the national life — and 
every true heart thanks God this day that this 
death-spell was broken, even by the tramp of armed 
men and the roar of the battle! 

And in emergencies like this surely even war is 



18 

a blessing. It is the natural antagonist of the 
sordid lust of gain. It calls into play other and 
higher social instincts — the craft, the subtlety, the 
guile of unscrupulous avarice give place to the 
self-denial, the self-sacrifice, the chivalrous daring of 
patriotism and soldiership. Evil as it is, it is still 
the less of two evils. Better a thousand times the 
wild torrent from the mountains, sweeping away 
the corn and the vines, wherewith human industry 
has clothed the fair lowlands, than the stagnant 
pool breeding deadly malaria ! Even these blasts of 
war have quickened our better impulses. We feel 
now that life has nobler aims than to build fine 
houses, to drive fast horses, to beautify large estates, 
and leave much wealth unto children. That cour- 
age, and manliness, and patriotism, and the preser- 
vation of a strong national life, and the homage 
and respect of a world, are of more worth even 
than a monopoly of the cotton trade. 

This war, in a word, is developing an American 
manhood and womanhood, full of the old noble and 
heroic impulses, worthy of our glorious ancestry 
and traditions, in whose reckoning the accumula- 
tions of industry, the thrift of trade, the gains of 
commerce, yea, even the life and blood of the 
beloved, are all only as the dust of the desert 
when the stake of the mighty game is a great 
philanthropic and Christian nationality. 

Meanwhile there are other collateral benefits 
which this conflict will work out for us. If we 



19 

triumph here — as, if at all true to ourselves we 
must and shall — we shall have convinced the world 
of the permanency and strength of free institu- 
tions, and indeed so have developed that strength 
in grand naval and military organizations, that we 
shall hear no more sneering at " the bubble-burst- 
ing Kepublic of the West." 

Sure we are — the more sure from all their malig- 
nant manifestations in this, our sore trial — that the 
old Empires in their essential antagonism to our 
institutions, and the intense hatred they cannot 
but cherish toward a social system elevating into 
self-government the masses of the race, as from the 
first they have prophesied our destruction, so they 
stand ready now to aid and exult in it. And it 
needs this great demonstration, not only of our 
inalienable right, but of our inherent power of self- 
government ; this bringing forth of old banners ; 
this marshaling of countless men ; this lavishing 
of wealth ; this triumph of the old flag, the old 
patriotism, the old unparalyzed, undivided, indomit- 
able national life over an antagonism within, com- 
pared with which all foreign invasion were as 
nothing ; it needs just this, I say, to teach a gazing 
and gainsaying world that, ordained of God for a 
great philanthropic mission into all nations, ours 
is as well the resistless power as the steadfast pur- 
pose to achieve it, even should it lead us into con- 
flict with the despotisms of the world. 

Meanwhile, beyond all these simply temporal 



20 



benefits, has this struggle a great spiritual use, in 
restoring our old primitive and puritan sense of 
dependance upon God. As already observed, under 
the united influences of prosperity and covetousness, 
we were fast becoming an irreverent, and indeed, 
atheistic nation, and that divine favor, whereon solely 
our fathers relied, was scarcely reckoned among our 
sources either of preservation or prosperity. But we 
are now learning, once for all, and thoroughly, that 
our national salvation depends neither on political 
sagacity, nor military strength, but on the protection 
of that Arm that ruleth in Zion — that, indeed, all 
those material resources, and social influences, which 
we counted as strength, are, without the divine 
blessing, only so many elements of destruction ; and 
that all those bonds of national Union, that we 
pronounced indissoluble — this broad communism of 
industrial and commercial interest — this grand geo- 
graphical unity — this brotherhood of kin, and cast, 
and race — this proud partnership in blessed memories 
and glorious hopes — that these, and whatsoever else 
have seemed bands of triple steel round our beloved 
confederacy, are yet only as a spider's web when an 
incensed God, turns away from us the light of his 
countenance. God is teaching us herein creat ethical 
and theological lessons, and will bring us forth from 
the trial, as gold purified from the fire, not the old 
boastful infidel nationality, but a reverent and chris- 
tian people, whose God is the Lord. 

We may not pursue this point further. Enough 



21 

has been said to illustrate, and guard from misrepre- 
sentation, our simple thoughts. We have attempted 
no commendation of war ; we have not said that 
self-considered, it is not ever and only a great and 
sore evil. We have only insisted that, terrible as it 
is, yet life, may have greater evils — that anarchy is a 
greater; that the dismemberment and destruction of 
this fair heritage is a greater ; that to live without a 
country, or a government, or an earthly future for 
ourselves and our children is a greater ; that to be 
strippped by traitorous hands of all that renders life 
enjoyable or endurable is a greater; that just here 
and now to pause in our national progress, and suffer 
our free institutions to fail, and the American name, 
with all its traditionary glory, and all its fair promise 
unto oppressed humanity, to become an offence and 
a scorn unto a gain-saying, or a disappointed world — 
that all this is immeasureably worse than any evils 
war itself can bring. 

We believe, indeed, that just this conflict is a great 
philosophic necessity in our national progress — sure 
to occur at some time, best to occur now — that it is 
only a mysteriously merciful dispensation of Provi- 
dence working out for us, through much tribulation, 
the integrity of a strong national life in the present, 
. and in the future an enduring and far more excellent 
glory. 

We, perhaps, may not live to witness the end 
of the conflict. Indeed there are some men who, in 
view of our present rate of progress, have little hope 



22 



that we shall. God seems to be treating us as he 
treated Israel — because of their unbelief and coward- 
ice, keeping them marching backward and forward 
forty years in a desert, which a band of Bedouin 
cavalry would have crossed in a month. It looks 
like this "now. We are surely as yet perplexed in 
the Exodus; there is a wild howling wilderness 
around ; and the water of our springs runs bitter ; and 
enemies fierce and strong are encamped in our path ; 
and there are among the tribes mean men, like Achan, 
that would turn back our march for gold ; and trait- 
orous men, like Korah, who rejoice in our discomfit- 
ure ; and timid men, like the spies of evil counsel, 
who whisper with pale lips of walled cities, and armed 
giants ; and between us and the longed-for rest rolls 
a dark deep river, and as yet we have not found our 
Joshua with the rod of God in his hand. And it 
may be God's purpose of judgment, that not a man 
of ours, as of that old generation, shall pass the Jor- 
dan in triumph. But it shall be passed! If not we, yet 
our children shall go over dry-shod and exulting and 
in the morning light. And when, in the serene calm 
of that sure future, the philosophic and Christian 
historian shall write up the record, and from that 
Canaan — that fair land of the promises and the cove- 
nants and the glory — reached at last wayworn and 
with weary feet, through wild deserts and armed 
foemen and dark and angry floods, shall review the 
strangely chequered past — all that weary way which 
the Lord God led us in the wildernes to humble us 



23 

and to prove us— then it will, I doubt not, be seen 
that this our Exodus, like the old, was the very 
richest in the experience of God's loving wisdom— a 
transitional era when a grandly rounded world 
emerged from a fiery deluge— an epoch of social 
progress, when a divinely strengthened people, hav- 
ing thoroughly mastered themselves, went up to a 
place of peerless glory amid the nationalities of the 
world. 

Now we have dwelt thus at length upon this war, 
because more than all else it tends to disturb our 
moods of thanksgiving, and we would have you 
feel that even this is no exception to the divine rule, 
— " In every thing to cjice thanks." 

But as yet we are only on the outskirts of the 
text's important truth. This war is but a single 
item of our large personal experience, which, even if 
it be reckoned only and altogether an evil, should not 
yet beguile us this day of the grace and joy of thanks- 
giving. So paramount and absorbing has become our 
thought of this war that it will at once surprise and 
benefit you to consider how little, with all its evils, 
it really lessens your reasons for gratitude to God. 
Grant that it is an unmitigated evil, it is nevertheless, 
only one evil in a vast and ever varied experience of 
. good. In spite of it, and in its midst, God has spread 
His banner of love over your banqueting house, with 
your table prepared in the midst of your enemies; 
your head anointed with oil, your cup running over. 
No less than before has this bright sun shone on you, 



24 

and healthful breezes fanned yon, and ministries of 
love gladdened your habitations. And yours have 
been all the ineffable consolations of the Gospel of 
Christ, and the hopes of a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory. Count this war only a 
divine judgment, "nevertheless, it is no more than a 
solitary cloud on a firmament still lustrous with the 
sun and stars of His infinite loving-kindness, and 
scarcely weakens the force of the inspired exhortation 
— " In every thing give thanks? 

Nor this only. This balancing of accounts with 
God, to feel that He has done us, on the whole, more 
good than evil, is a very pitiful and unworthy view, 
to take of the duty of thanksgiving. Our text takes 
much higher ground. It enjoins thankfulness in all 
circumstances. Even if they should seem utterly 
distressing. And teaches us that true thanksgiving 
is not a selfish emotion gratified by prosperity, but a 
vital grace in the soul, existing independent of cir- 
cumstances or condition. 

Let us then in our brief remainder of discourse 
consider Thankfulness as a gracious affection of the 
soul — What it is? and How it is to be strengthened? 

First. — What is the thankfulness tchicli the text 
enjoins ? And we answer that it is not a simple, but a 
composite emotion — consisting of joy from benefits. 
And love for the benefactor. Simple joy alone has no 
determinate moral quality ; it may be good, it may be 
thoroughly evil. Without love it is altogether bad 
and abominable. Thankless delight belongs to the 



25 



class of selfish and malevolent emotions, and may 
be felt in full strength by a beast, or a demon. Joy 
sanctified by love is that heavenly grace which the 
Bible calls " Thankfulness." 

Secondly — How is tins grace to he developed and 
strengthened ? 

It is implied in the text's very language that true 
thankfulness does not depend upon our outward con- 
dition — because it is enjoined in the midst of, and 
despite the most calamitous circumstances — " In 
every thing give thanks." 

And here we are reminded of the nice old distinc- 
tion of language (now indeed lost) between " Happi- 
ness" and " Joy". The word Happiness, from the 
verb " to hap" expresses our delight in what happens 
to us — or comes to us from without. But the word 
" Joy " — from a root which means to spring — denotes 
a delight, not produced by outward things, but by 
the quality and harmony of the soul's inbred emo- 
tions. In short — Happiness enters from without — 
Joy issues from within — the one results from condi- 
tion: the other from character. In this sense the 
ground-form of thankfulness is not happiness but joy 
— the abiding grace — not the occasional emotion. 

The text implies moreover that unthankfulness is 
not merely a sorrowful mood caused by conditions, 
but a sinful disposition constituting character. — And a 
sin it surely is everywhere and always — a fearful dis- 
temper of the spiritual man — an insanity of the will — a 
neuralgia of the affections — rendering the arm nerve 



26 

less for good — the heart pulseless of gladness — a ma- 
lignant inspiration, moody and wrathful, thinking 
evil of God and working evil toward men, unfitting 
the soul for heaven, and excluding it from its bless- 
edness. 

Thankfulness is the effluence of a fine grace of 
character, which like all graces is to be strengthened 
by the culture of the various dispositions upon which 
it depends. Among which are — 

1st. Humility. — Much of our discontent results from 
pride — an overweening estimate of our own dessert. 
But let a man in true humility regard himself, as he 
is, a wrath-deserving sinner, and by every mercy that 
lifts him above eternal despair will his heart be filled 
with joy, and his lips with thanksgiving. 

2ndly. Benevolence. — A disposition that rejoices 
even in the superior happiness of others. Augustine 
calls envy the besetting sin of the devil, who envied 
Jehovah in heaven and Adam in Paradise, and the 
essence of whose torment is a thought of happiness 
which he cannot share. To an envious soul true joy 
is impossible — if perfect in conditions of manhood, it 
will writhe at the thought of angelic spheres and pin- 
ions — if raised to Gabriel's ministry in the very pre- 
sence of God, it will be in anguish at the sight of that 
higher throne and the loftier One that sitteth on it. 
Now in a universe like this we must all have supe- 
riors — spirits of loftier spheres, even fellow-men of 
finer gifts and positions. And to be thankful in our 
lowlier estate, we must have that benevolence which 
finds joy in the happiness of others. 



27 



3dly. A Good Conscience — A sense of ill dessert gives 
to real good the seeming of evil. To a murderer the 
gentle footstep and voice of ministering love seem, 
sometimes the fierce tread and cry of the blood- 
avenger. It was an accusing conscience that made 
that lustrous hand-writing terrible unto Belshazzar as 
words of doom ; and unto Herod arrayed the miracle- 
wOrking and most merciful Savior in the terrors of an 
avenging phantom risen from the dead. And so it 
is ever. A troubled conscience makes our good seem 
evil — like the Gadarene demon driving the man, 
whose lot God had cast under the glorious skies, and 
by the blue lake of Galilee, to torture himself in the 
mountains, and make his home in the tombs. While 
a peaceful conscience builds for itself a palace even in 
the wilderness, gathering joy from all circumstances, 
prosperous, or adverse, adjusting the heart's chords, 
like an JEolian's, to give forth pleasant harmonies, 
whether touched by the zephyr, or swept by the 
hurricane. 

4thly. A Sound Judgment. — Our discomfort with 
things as they are, springs often from a misconception 
as to how things ought to be. Setting out with the 
notion that present comfort is our chief good, we will 
be sure to misjudge God's dispensations. For, in 
that case, the kindest thing he can do for us, is to 
sink our rational powers into mere animal instincts. 
An immortal spirit, within the limits of time, and the 
conditions of probation, must necessarily be restless. 
The bird-of-paradise will never sing in a cage 
like a pet linnet. But zoophites are proverbially 



28 



uncomplaining, and periwinkles float with the tide 
in a very sea of comfort, and well-fed oxen and 
geese and swine are, in their own sphere, and 
after their kind, as contented as the angels. But 
then present pleasure is not the supreme earthly 
good. Man's life here is not terminal, but a transi- 
tion, not a May-game, but an earnest work — a battle 
in heavy armor with Principalities and Powers — 
an Exodus through a desert where angels encamp 
round us under burning suns, and the fiery serpent 
hisses even in the shade of the Shekinah. And 
the true heart prefers the pilgrimage to the 
play-ground, accepting and exulting in its con- 
dition of discipline, and, wise to value blessings 
according to their spiritual uses, thanks God more 
for the crown of thorns than the May-queen's gar- 
land, and counts the star-fire of the firmament of 
greater price than all the colored lamps of an 
imperial pavilion. 

5thly. Patience. — In considering our obligations to 
God, we are to remember, that He works for our 
good, as elsewhere, slowly and in circles of immense 
sweep. His buildings are not Aladdin's palaces, 
nor his oaks Jonah's gourds. His mercies come 
to us often in the germ, and sometimes the kernel 
has a rough shell, which yields only to acrid chemis- 
tries and sharp frosts. And we must perceive the 
oak in the acorn, and the perfected temple in its 
slowly wrought walls and pillars, and, patiently 
awaiting the consummation of God's gracious pur- 



29 

poses, be thankful for undeveloped blessings, even 
though their rind be rough, and their bud bitter. 

6thly. And above all, as indeed the strength 
and life of all else, will thankfulness depend upon 
the cultivation of Faith — or a firm persuasion of 
and trust in God's loving kindness. This, in its 
connections, the text especially teaches — •« In every- 
thing give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ 
Jesus concerning you." Whatever be the precise force 
of the words — "in Christ Jesus" — they certainly 
connect thanksgiving with Gospel faith. If we are 
in Christ Jesus — or instructed by Christ Jesus, we 
shall reckon all that comes to us from God as truly 
and only beneficent. If our cup be bitter, yet trust- 
ful in the great Physician, we judge that our true 
need is of medicine, and take it, as more richly a 
" cup of thanksgiving," than a crystal chalice of the 
water of life from the hand of an angel. If our way 
be in the dark valley, where overhanging cliffs shut 
out sun and stars, and the air is chill, and the path 
flinty to the bleeding feet, yet we know that through 
it the Great Shepherd leads his flock in love to 
richer and greener pastures and fairer landscapes 
beyond, and so walk it with joyous footsteps and 
thankful songs. 

Faith. — Faith resting on the Gospel of " God in 
Christ Jesus," and strengthened by livelong expe- 
rience of God, unfailing loving-kindness — this is what 
we most want to quicken our thankfulness. Faith in 
the present — not considering with Job, u the parts of 



30 

God's ways" (i. e.,) — the lower parts, or endings, of 
His wonderful workings — not looking solely at the 
one wheel moving on the dust of the great car of 
Providence, but lifting the eye heavenward to take 
in the whole pageant, until it seem, not merely a 
revolving wheel but a careering chariot — " a fire 
unfolding itself and a brightness, round about it," 
and above it, " a crystal firmament and the likeness 
of a sapphire Throne," and upon it, the Eternal 
One triumphantly marching in His great purposes of 
love. And Faith in the future — looking even beyond 
the careering chariot to the Eternal bourne whither 
it is bearing us — that celestial city with its golden 
palaces — that immortal kingdom of peace and 
righteousness and rapture, where God's germ of 
love bursts into magnificent blossom, and " these 
light afflictions" bear fruit in " that far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory." Such a faith we 
need, until every part of our present experience, 
whether joyous or grievous shall seem a necessary 
step in a triumphal progress, and instead of balancing 
the evil against the good in our reckoning with 
Providence, we feel that there is no evil about it — 
that it is good only and good altogether, so that we 
can not do otherwise than — "m every thing give 
thanks." 

Such are some of the dispositions to be cherished 
if we would live in obedience to the exhortation of 
the text. Such is the nature of the grace of thanks- 
giving—and such is the ground of the apostolic 
exhortation—" In every thing give thanks." 



31 

It is sad to think that such an exhortation should 
be needed — that thankfulness should ever be enjoined 
as a duty. An unspeakable privilege, an irrepressible 
and joyous instinct of a loving heart, it should be 
rather ! What living man can be unthankful I What 
place in a heart here for the demon — Discontent \ 
What could have been done for God's vineyard 
that He hath not done'? Go, compute, if you can, 
heaven's constant and marvelous benefactions ! Crea- 
tion, preservation, redemption — who shall ascribe 
values to such things'? Life! what a gift it is in 
contrast with non-existence! Life, even the lowest 
— a flower's life — a bird's ! How the lily and the 
lark praise God, till the air seems odorous and 
musical with their thanksgivings! 

And yet the winged bird is a poor soulless wanderer 
and the brightest flower dies with the summer ! 
How then with your life can you be thankless! An 
immortal life, bearing God's own image ! With a 
power of thought and love to soar over the grave and 
wander through eternity ! A life springing from the 
depths of the Heavenly Father's love, and preserved 
at the price of the eternal Son's redemption ! A life 
so conditioned for developement, awaiting such a 
destiny — watched by angels in a star-hung world — 
approaching spheres for whose glory, thought has no 
image, and language no name ! 

Oh, men! immortal men! sons of God! Princes 
of endless empires, borne in this world-chariot to 
palaces and thrones ! How can you be thankless ? 



32 



How can you sit in God's house in sack cloth, or 
return to your homes disconsolate 1 You, who 
might have been fading flowers — dead stones — 
nothing! Nay, who, but for God's amazing and 
infinite grace, would be this hour lost spirits — the 
eternal gulph between you and the heavenly man- 
sions — the immortal wing outward-bound unto the 
blackness of darkness ! You, whose afflictions, even 
at their worst, are no more than a stain of dust on a 
conqueror's chariot-wheel — a plume gone from the 
wing of a soaring eagle ! What mean you, thus 
thanklessly to count your losses and trials and sor- 
rows in a reckoning with God 1 Oh, awake to better 
thoughts ! Lift your eye from the low path you are 
treading to the brighter things before and around 
you — the divine love that watches over you ; the 
shining angels that wait on you ; the eternal city that 
opens its glorious gates to welcome you ! 

Awake ! awake from those frames of thankless 
sadness! Awake, psaltery and harp! Oh, sons and 
daughters of God, break forth into singing. Praise 
ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song. Let 
Israel rejoice in Him that made him. Let the 
children of Zion be joyful in their King; both young 
men and maidens, old men and children. Sing unto 
the Lord with thanksgiving. Praise God in His 
sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His 
power. Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise 
according to His excellent greatness. Praise the 
Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless His 
holy name ! 









THANKSGIVING SERMONS. 

BY CHARLES WADSWORTH. 



I. 

THANKFULNESS. A Sermon preached on Sabbath " 
Morning, November 16, 1856, preceding the Animal 
Thanksgiving ; and 

CHARACTER. A Sermon preached on Thanksgiving 
Day, November 20, 1856, by Charles Wadsworth, 
in the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. 
Price 25 cents, or five for One Dollar. 

II. 

AMERICA'S MISSION. A Sermon preached in the 
Arch Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, on 
Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1855. By Charles 
Wadsworth. Price 25 cents, or five for One Dollar. 

III. 

POLITICS IN RELIGION. A Thanksgiving Sermon 
preached in the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, 
Philadelphia, on Thursday Morning, November 23, 
18M. By Charles Wadsworth. Price 12| cents, or . 
ten copies for One Dollar. 

The above Sermons are published in a beautiful style, 
and are for sale at the Cheap Bookselling and Publishing 
House of 

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, 

306 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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